Vulnerability · Published May 5, 2020 · Assigned by mitre
CVE-2020-12656
Medium 5.5
In plain English
A medium-severity security flaw in the linux package (Debian). There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.3% (higher than 27% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
gss_mech_free in net/sunrpc/auth_gss/gss_mech_switch.c in the rpcsec_gss_krb5 implementation in the Linux kernel through 5.6.10 lacks certain domain_release calls, leading to a memory leak. Note: This was disputed with the assertion that the issue does not grant any access not already available. It is a problem that on unloading a specific kernel module some memory is leaked, but loading kernel modules is a privileged operation. A user could also write a kernel module to consume any amount of memory they like and load that replicating the effect of this bug
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:12 | linux | 5.7.6-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2020-12656 |
| Debian:13 | linux | 5.7.6-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2020-12656 |
| Debian:14 | linux | 5.7.6-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2020-12656 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | linux-intel-iot-realtime | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2020-12656 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | linux-raspi-realtime | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2020-12656 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | linux-realtime | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2020-12656 |
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | linux-riscv | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2020-12656 |
Affected products (as reported)
References
- https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206651 x_refsource_MISC
- openSUSE-SU-2020:0801 vendor-advisory, x_refsource_SUSE
- openSUSE-SU-2020:0935 vendor-advisory, x_refsource_SUSE
- USN-4483-1 vendor-advisory, x_refsource_UBUNTU
- USN-4485-1 vendor-advisory, x_refsource_UBUNTU